Feature Documentary Competition | Egypt | Arabic | 75 min
A walk through the nation’s cinematic history? Or through the characters’ memories? Or through the mind of the filmmaker? I Have a Picture seems to encompass all of the above. In this documentary, filmmaker Mohamed Zedan succeeds in fusing his personal obsessions with the rich lives of his two main characters: veteran extra Motawe Eweis
and assistant director Kamal El Homossany.
The film begins with a voiceover where the director recounts his own personal story with cinema as medium, and the beginning of his interest in Eweis, the prolific extra. With the help of his friend, El Homossany, Zedan finally manages to reach Eweis, and the journey of making the film begins.
I Have a Picture goes beyond the vast number of stories and gossip about the Egyptian film industry that flow from both Eweis and El Homossany, in themselves superbly entertaining, to explore the nature of life on the sidelines of show business, at the edge of the limelight.
While it starts as a simple portrait of an actor viewed by many to be a marginal presence in the industry, the film cleverly transforms into a muffled conflict between El Homossany and Zedan. The old assistant director, re-entering the world of cinema with a bunch of filmmakers he views as amateurs, sees in them a chance to show off his vast
if outdated knowledge of filmmaking, while the young, independent filmmaker views this conflict as rich material for his film, turning it into a second storyline that runs in parallel to that of his protagonist’s life.
Mohamed Zedan is an independent filmmaker born in May 1983. He pursued his studies in filmmaking at the Jesuit Cultural Center and has always been interested in the history of cinema. He currently gives workshops about film history at the French Cultural Centre in Alexandria, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and other venues. He took part in a video art workshop organized by MASS Alexandria for contemporary art in 2003 and participated as an assistant artist at the Sharjah Biennale. Zedan has worked as an assistant director on many short and feature films.
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